Posted by JonThe received wisdom in the proposal profession – reflected in the APMP Foundation examination – is that one should use ‘serif’ fonts (such as Times New Roman) for body text, and a ‘sans serif’ font (such as Arial) for headings and captions. Having played with a few typefaces over the years – including some interesting experiments, setting out the same proposal in different fonts and gathering feedback from users – it’s always seemed like a fairly sensible guide.

Certainly, most designers tend to work primarily with sans serif fonts. They’re deemed easier to read at larger font sizes, and work well on short documents. And that’s where many corporate branding teams focus when mandating a ‘corporate font’: their practical experience revolves largely around brochures, adverts, websites, emails, letters – not on proposals, which are much longer. Yet I’ve worked with many top-notch designers who’ve seemed very cynical about the advice that one should switch over to a serif font for longer documents, and I’m far from sure that that’s merely ignorance on their part.

So, I decided recently to look for the underlying evidence to support the two sides of the debate. That took me to a fascinating article by ​ Alex Poole, entitled “Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces?”. Alex explains that “An argument has been raging for decades within the scientific and typographic communities on what seems a very insignificant issue: Do serifs contribute to the legibility of typefaces, and by definition, are sans serif typefaces less legible? To date, no one has managed to provide a conclusive answer to this issue.”

He talks through various typographical definitions in detail, then “reviews the evidence for and against the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces”, drawing extensively on various academic studies of the issue. And his conclusion?

​What initially seemed a neat dichotomous question of serif versus sans serif has resulted in a body of research consisting of weak claims and counter-claims, and study after study with findings of “no difference”. Is it the case that more than one hundred years of research has been marred by repeated methodological flaws, or are serifs simply a typographical “red herring”?

It is of course possible that serifs or the lack of them have an effect on legibility, but it is very likely that they are so peripheral to the reading process that this effect is not even worth measuring. Indeed, a greater difference in legibility can easily be found within members of the same type family than between a serif and a sans serif typeface. There are also other factors such as x-height, counter size, letter spacing and stroke width which are more significant for legibility than the presence or absence of serifs.

Finally, we should accept that most reasonably designed typefaces in mainstream use will be equally legible, and that it makes much more sense to argue in favour of serif or sans serif typefaces on aesthetic grounds than on the question of legibility.

So maybe, just maybe, the ‘standard’ proposal convention is less robust that it might appear. Certainly, I’ll be less forceful with corporate branding folks having reviewed the article than I’ve sometimes been in the past. But it doesn’t shake me from my belief that the best way to choose a font for your proposal is to make sure it’s one with which the evaluators would feel comfortable, and potentially to print samples of the document in different fonts and canvass opinion on which is easiest to read and most attuned to your story and brand.

Like anything else in a proposal, what font to use also depends on your audience. Most engineers are used to using Arial. They don’t find serif fonts easier to read. For the financial industry and business, serif fonts are common and that is what folks in that industry find easier to read.

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Ruth Turman

3/25/2016 04:17:45 pm

As a confessed font “junkie,” in my personal life (not that I’d never dream of using Black Adder, Edwardian Script, Gigi, or Old English Text in a proposal!) I’ve followed this debate for years so I find this latest bit of research interesting and I appreciate you sharing it.

But I’m surprised at you, Jon, that at no point did you mention the requirements of the RFP. I know that the organization I support would love to move to a sans serif font (any of them!) because they feel it looks more “modern,” but we are restricted by the government agency whose mandate is that we MUST use Times New Roman, 12 pt., with line spacing at exactly 12 pt. (which is a great space saver, but in my opinion creates such tight blocks of text that even if serif fonts were easier to read, the compression diminishes any value they might have). It’s painful enough for me to put together 750-1000 pages in that format. I truly feel for the customers who are required to read it and probably have been given no say in what their preferences would be.

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Jon

3/25/2016 04:17:57 pm

Good points from each of you, and thanks so much for the comments.

Certainly, on a live proposal, one would always follow the RFP instructions first: that almost goes without saying. And thinking through what’s best for your specific audience is at the heart of what I was suggesting: “the best way to choose a font for your proposal is to make sure it’s one with which the evaluators would feel comfortable.” The debate regarding serif vs sans-serif only really tends to kick into play actively when the customer doesn’t specify the font to be used, and/or when one’s looking to develop one or more ’standard’ corporate proposal template(s).

It’s an interesting thought that engineers prefer Arial – the challenge to that, of course, is that most proposals are reviewed by cross-functional teams! As for differences between different sectors, I’ve worked in (and on proposals to) various of those industries mentioned, and I can’t say I’ve noticed any hard-and-fast rules regarding typical fonts used in each. I’d really welcome any evidence on that front.

Great stuff – keep the debate flowing, folks!

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Ruth Turman

3/25/2016 04:18:08 pm

Actually, the engineer’s preference for sans serif is not all that surprising. In a previous incarnation I studied architecture in college (way back in the dark ages before Autocad programs). Although draftsmen are taught to use a sans serif font, care is taken to emphasize the intersections between horizontal and vertical strokes of each letter (in effect serving a function similiar to that of a serif). The reason for this was that it improved legibility when the original hand-drawn plans were reproduced in blue prints (which later became blue line drawings). With modern plotting equipment, this is no longer a requirement, but the standard remains in both architectural and engineering drafting.

In a similiar manner, I’m sure, more business oriented disciplines evolved from the typewritten word (a serif font until IBM came out with it’s Selectric model with interchangeable type balls). Personally and despite my drafting background, I tend to think of serif fonts as more formal and more business “appropriate” (but then I’d be the first to admit I’m old fashioned and still put a comma before “and” in lists and am struggling to use only a single space between sentences).

Admittedly this is apocryphal rather than evidentiary, but does it not all boil down to the first tenent of proposal managment: Know thy customer!?

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Jan R. Skinner

3/25/2016 04:18:20 pm

Always follow the RFP, of course. But waaaay back in my days at college to work on magazines, I learned that most readable fonts in large blocks of text “should” be in serif font. Heads should be in sans serif. Single column text was the hardest to read. (Why else do they set newspapers and books in serif fonts and road signs in sans serif?) I follow this guideline in proposals — given no guidance from the RFP.

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Jen

3/25/2016 04:18:34 pm

I remember having this discussion with you! I think the best way to choose a font for a bid is to pick whatever your client uses the most within their marketing literature and on their website. Unless they favour Times New Roman in which case they probably need educating as to what looks good and hwat doesn’t!